My Antonia

When Jim Burden’s parents both die within a year, Jim’s relatives in Virginia send the 10-year-old boy to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. On his train ride across the American plains, Jim travels in the care of Jake Marpole, a teenaged farmhand. Jake is going West to work for Jim’s grandfather, so the two boys are setting out “together to try our fortunes in the new world” (3). Jake buys every item the newsboys sell along the route, including a book, Life of Jesse James, for Jim, which the 10-year-old loves to read. The conductor tells them about a European family on board in the immigrant car heading for their same destination of Black Hawk, Nebraska. No one in the immigrant family can speak any English except for a few basic words known by the daughter who is about 13 years old. Shy Jim avoids meeting the girl, and Jake approves because he thinks foreigners might have diseases.

When they arrive at Black Hawk at night, Jim notices a man pick up the immigrant family in a farm wagon. His grandfather’s hired man, Otto Fuchs, loads Jim and Jake into another farm wagon, and Jim is impressed to see “nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made” (7). He feels erased, overwhelmed by the vast expanse of sky and earth.

After arriving at his grandparents’ farm, Jim sleeps until the afternoon. He meets his grandmother, a tall, strong, dark-haired woman with wrinkled, brown skin, who looks as if she is thinking of “things that were far away” (10). Jim is surprised that she takes him “down to the kitchen,” instead of “out in the kitchen” (9) as it was situated in his Virginia home, and learns that his grandparents’ residence is the only wooden home west of Black Hawk: Their few neighbors live in sod houses or dugouts. Grandmother Burden talks with Jim about his journey and the new Bohemian family who will be their nearest neighbors. She informs Jim that Otto Fuchs emigrated from Austria to America as a young boy and had adventures in the Far West. After supper, Otto tells Jim exciting stories about his life, shows his cowboy boots and spurs, and reveals that a pony named “Dude” has been purchased for Jim to ride.

The next morning, Jim explores the farmstead. His grandfather’s cornfield is larger than any he has seen in Virginia, and everywhere else there is only tall, red grass. He imagines the shaggy grass as “a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping” (16). When his grandmother, holding a cane to kill rattlesnakes, takes him to her garden, Jim sits down, leaning his back against a large pumpkin. Grandmother Burden returns to the house, but he remains peacefully sitting in nature, feeling “entirely happy . . . dissolved into something complete and great” (18).

On Sunday, Otto drives Jim and Grandmother Burden over to meet their new neighbors, the Shimerdas, and take them some provisions. The immigrants have no garden, no chicken house, and not much plowed land. A fellow Bohemian, Peter Krajiek, had sold them his rough homestead for more than it is worth, but they made the deal before immigrating and are now stuck in a less-than-ideal situation. Mr. Shimerda knows nothing about farming; he was a skilled weaver and violinist in his homeland.

When Mrs. Shimerda comes out of the cave where the immigrants dwell, Jim notices her “sharp chin and shrewd little eyes” (22) as she complains about her residence. Her 19-year-old son, Ambrosch, has eyes similar to those of his mother, but slyer and more suspicious. He is short with a strong, broad back, and a wide face. However, the 14-year-old daughter, Ántonia, is beautiful with big, warm eyes “full of light” (23). Her younger sister, Yulka, is pretty and obedient. The youngest Shimerda boy, Marek, is strange: Born with webbed fingers, Marek makes odd noises, but he is harmless. Mr. Shimerda is tall and slender, with white, well-shaped hands. However, his eyes are melancholy. He greets the visitors with an understanding look and courteously kisses Grandmother Burden’s hand.

Ántonia holds out her hand to Jim, and they playfully run towards the creek, followed by Yulka, and sit in the tall grass. While they gaze at the blue sky, Ántonia quickly and eagerly persuades Jim to teach her his name and other words in English. In gratitude, she tries to give him her silver ring, but he refuses, thinking she is being overly generous. When her father calls her, she runs and kisses his hand. Mr. Shimerda shows Jim a book that has the English alphabet on one side and the Bohemian alphabet on the other. He gives the book to Grandmother Burden before they depart and entreats them to teach Ántonia English.

On that same Sunday afternoon, Jim takes his first ride on his pony, “Dude,” under the guidance of Otto. After that, Jim serves as an errand boy for the Burdens, saving the hired men time by riding twice a week to the post office six miles away, and carrying messages to the neighbors. Otto tells Jim the legend that Mormon explorers had scattered sunflower seeds when they were seeking a place to freely worship, leaving a trail for the Mormon settlers to follow. Consequently, for Jim, “the sunflower-bordered roads always seem . . . the roads to freedom” (29). Sometimes, Jim rides north, accompanied by Ántonia, to the large prairie dog town, where they watch earth owls nest underground with the prairie dogs and avoid the rattlesnakes that lurk there. Almost daily, Ántonia runs across the prairie to take English lessons from Jim, and she is soon able to express her many strong opinions. At first, Mrs. Shimerda grumbles about the time Ántonia spends on lessons but eventually realizes the need for a family member to speak English.

Ántonia loves to learn about cooking and housekeeping from Grandmother Burden. The Burdens are suspicious about Mrs. Shimerda’s housekeeping skills and are horrified by the ash-grey bread she prepares using an old peck-measure formerly kept in the barn. The Shimerdas hate Krajiek, but they allow him to live with them because they feel dependent on their countryman.

Ántonia and her sister are happy playing on the prairie with Jim, and Ántonia is excited when she sees her father laugh for the first time in America. She tells Jim that Mr. Shimerda has befriended two Russian immigrants because they came from a part of Russia where the language is similar to Bohemian. After Mr. Shimerda meets the two Russians, who live near the prairie dog town, he visits them nearly every evening. Jim finds the Russians, Pavel and Peter, strange: He feels a little frightened of the fierce-looking Pavel whose inability to speak English and whose wild gestures give rise to the rumor that he is an anarchist. Pavel’s large build has a wasted appearance, and he has a persistent cough. His companion, Peter, is fat, short, and friendly. The Russians work together as farmhands.

One afternoon, Jim and Ántonia ride his pony to visit the Russians’ neat log cabin. Peter tells Ántonia “that in his country only rich people had cows” (35), but here, he can have his own. He grows watermelons, which he says his countrymen eat for their health and hospitably eats some melons with his visitors. Peter plays the harmonica to entertain Jim and Ántonia and gives them cucumbers for Mrs. Shimerda to cook.

Ántonia now knows enough English that she can talk to Jim about almost anything, and he familiarly refers to her as “Ántonia.” One day on a grassy bank near a badger’s hole, Ántonia informs Jim about how much badgers are valued in her Bohemian homeland and how special the dogs are that hunt them.

The weather is beginning to cool, and Ántonia tells Jim about an old woman in her home village who sells herbs that she digs up in the forest. The elderly beggar, Old Hata, sings songs to the Bohemian children in a cracked voice that sounds like this insect. The children in Ántonia’s village love to see her and save their sweets to give to her. When Jim and Ántonia start homeward, Ántonia carefully places the tiny insect in her hair and ties her handkerchief loosely over it. They see Ántonia’s father wandering on the farmstead, and she confides to Jim that her father is always sick. Ántonia runs to her father and places his hand against her cheek: “She was the only one of his family who could rouse the old man from the torpor in which he seemed to live” (41). Mr. Shimerda shows them the rabbits he has shot for meat and to make Ántonia a rabbit-skin hat. He states that he will give Jim his fine gun from Bohemia when he is older; Mr. Shimerda was given the gun by an aristocrat when he played his violin at the rich man’s wedding.

As much as Jim likes Ántonia, he also resents the superior tone that she sometimes adopts with him: He is “a boy and she is a girl,” and he does not like her “protecting manner” (43). After one particular adventure, however, Ántonia begins to treat Jim more like an equal and even defers to him in other areas besides their reading lessons.

On a visit to the Shimerdas, Jim learns that Ántonia is planning to walk to Peter’s house in order to borrow a shovel for Ambrosch, so Jim offers her a ride on his pony. After they fetch the shovel, Ántonia suggests they stop at the prairie-dog town and dig into one of the holes to see if it goes straight down or horizontally. While they are examining the hole, Jim hears Ántonia scream and point behind him. When Jim whirls around, he sees a large rattlesnake. Although he feels sick and frightened, he strikes the snake with the spade, repeatedly pounding its head flat. For Ántonia, Jim’s feat places him in the traditional masculine role of protector, and she no longer sees Jim as a little boy.

Misfortune seems to follow the two Russian immigrants. Peter’s debt increases faster than his crops grow because he is cheated by Wick Cutter, an unscrupulous moneylender in Black Hawk. When Mr. Shimerda and Ántonia visit the Burdens to get buttermilk, Russian Peter arrives to fetch them because Pavel is very ill. Jim pleads with his grandmother to permit him to go along, and she humors him. At the Russians’ log house, Pavel is bedridden and coughing blood.

When Pavel hears the howl of coyotes, he becomes distressed and whispers a long story to Mr. Shimerda about being attacked by famished wolves in Russia on the night of a friend’s wedding. The incident led Pavel and Peter to become outcasts in their town because they were the only members of the wedding party who returned alive. Later, Ántonia translates the horrifying tale for Jim.

Pavel dies a few days after confessing his story to Mr. Shimerda. Peter sells all his possessions and leaves the region to work where other Russian immigrants are employed. Mr. Shimerda becomes even more depressed after the loss of his friends and often broods in their empty log house. Ántonia and Jim never tell the shocking tale of the Russian wedding party to anyone else, but it haunts them.

The first snowfall arrives in early December. Otto makes a sleigh for Jim by attaching bobs to a wooden box, and Jim takes Ántonia and Yulka on a sleigh ride. On their way back, Jim lends his wool comforter to Yulka. She forgets to return it, and Jim falls ill with a throat condition for almost two weeks. The Burdens’ basement kitchen seems like a cozy refuge from the winter cold; Jim admires “the cheerful zest with which grandmother went about keeping us warm and comfortable and well-fed” (66). When the men return from working outside, Jim wonders how they can do the chores so devotedly, despite never earning more than a dollar or two per day: The hired hands, Otto and Jim, are “always ready to work overtime and to meet emergencies. It was a matter of pride with them not to spare themselves” (68).

The Burdens do not hear from the Shimerdas for several weeks after the sleigh ride. One night, Jake says that Ambrosch showed him three prairie dogs he had shot and asked if they would be edible. Grandmother Burden is alarmed that the Shimerdas have been reduced to eating prairie dogs: She orders Jake to kill a rooster and pack a hamper of provisions to take to the Shimerdas. When Jake, Jim, and Grandmother Burden arrive at the Shimerdas’ place, Mrs. Shimerda cries and looks at them accusingly. She shakes an empty coffee-pot at them and shows them a barrel of rotting potatoes. When Jake brings in the food hamper, Mrs. Shimerda breaks down. Jim has never seen Ántonia look so “crushed” (74).

Mr. Shimerda describes how he had saved over a thousand dollars but lost the money on the New York stock exchange. If they can make it through to springtime, he plans to buy a cow and chickens, build a new house, and plant a garden. Before the Burdens depart, Mrs. Shimerda gives a teacup full of brown shavings to Grandmother Burden, saying they are very good to eat. At home, when Grandmother Burden opens the gift from Mrs. Shimerda, she cannot tell what it is, so she throws it out. Many years later, Jim learns that the brown chips were dried mushrooms, probably gathered in the Bohemian forest.